prepared for any degree of poetical power, for there being a great
deal more than I could at all appreciate; but there is something
altogether different from this, something which such a man as
Clough has, for instance, which I did not expect to find in Matt;
but it is there. Of course when I speak of his Poems I only speak
of the impression received from those I understand. Some are
perfect riddles to me, such as that to the Child at Douglas, which
is surely more poetical than true.

_Strangely like experience!_ The words are an interesting proof of the
difficulty we all have in seeing with accuracy the persons and things
which are nearest to us. The astonishment of the sisters--for the same
feeling is expressed by Mrs. Forster--was very natural. In these early
days, "Matt" often figures in the family letters as the worldling of the
group--the dear one who is making way in surroundings quite unknown to
the Fox How circle, where, under the shadow of the mountains, the
sisters, idealists all of them, looking out a little austerely, for all
their tenderness, on the human scene, are watching with a certain
anxiety lest Matt should be "spoiled." As Lord Lansdowne's private
secretary, very much liked by his chief, he goes among rich and
important people, and finds himself, as a rule, much cleverer than they;
above all, able to amuse them, so often the surest road to social and
other success. Already at Oxford "Matt" had been something of an
exquisite--or, as Miss Bronte puts it, a trifle "foppish"; and (in the
manuscript) _Fox How Magazine_, to which all the nine contributed, and
in which Matthew Arnold's boyish poems may still be read, there are many
family jests leveled at Matt's high standard in dress and deportment.

But how soon the nascent dread lest their poet should be somehow
separated from them by the "great world" passes away from mother and